Scared straight and other juvenile awareness programs

Abstract

On August 18, 2003, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed a bill into law that mandated the Chicago Public School system to identify students at risk for committing future crime and set up a program to give them "tours of state prison" to discourage any future criminal conduct (Long and Chase, 2003). As the news article makes clear, policymakers had good reasons for passing the law. Parents of young children were desperate to find ways to deter their kids from a life of crime. With some youth (even at ages 11 and 12) getting involved early in gangs, there was mounting pressure on policymakers to intervene early in their lives to dissuade them from potentially more serious behavior. The Governor himself is quoted as saying that the law is intended to "give some kids a chance to see what happens if they dont follow the rules, follow the law, and whats ahead for them if they dont do that" (Long and Chase, 2003:1). This is only the surface of the discussion that was briskly reported in this Chicago T ribune article. There was certainly some opposition to it, and some of this criticism reflected upon prior research about similar programs. Indeed, one opponent said that the prison tours were an attempt to resurrect "Scared Straight" type programs, which had been found to be ineffective in curbing delinquency (Long and Chase, 2003). Is this true? Or is the Illinois government right on target by introducing this law? The latter is a difficult question to answer without looking at the evidence. In this chapter, we report the results of a systematic review of the nine randomized experiments of Scared Straight and other prison tour programs (also referred to as juvenile awareness or prison awareness programs). Of course, prior research is no guarantee that interventions will work (or not work) in a future setting. But a reader might ask oneself the following question upon reading the results of a systematic review:Would I want a doctor to prescribe a drug for my children that has the same track record of research results? © 2006 Springer.